Lost Ark has been suffering through technical problems, as of late; players have been getting disconnected from the MMO's servers for no reason, and bots are running rampant. Meanwhile, the Lost Ark team is attempting to get players ready for a major update set to take place on Wednesday. This overhaul will require players to log in and store their gear, as the update will change how skills work. An in-game reminder mail that went out to Lost Ark accounts seemed to serve as an apology gift as well, because it included 10 "Pheons", a small amount of premium currency that the game uses for its auction house. Players assumed that this was compensation due to the server outages and problems that players had been encountering, especially as it's a common form of apology for online games that experience unexpected downtime.

To put it into perspective, 10 pheons is a very small amount. A single accessory in-game costs 25 pheons, and ability stones cost 9 pheons each. It can often take 200-300 pheons just to roll a 7/7 stone that's "end-game" ready, and that can mean upwards of 100, 000 gold spent on RNG rolls.

However, hours after the Pheons were sent out to all players, the Lost Ark team took the game down for emergency maintenance. According to the developers, the 10 Pheons weren't meant to be sent out in the first place, and they would be revoking them from anyone who claimed them. This worried players who had already spent them, wondering if they would be charged or go into a negative balance. Once the game came back online, after multiple extensions of the emergency maintenance and five total hours of downtime, the team decided to not revoke the accidental gift, claiming that most used the Pheons assuming it was all in good faith. According to them, an exploit was discovered where players could duplication and infinitely earn Pheons from the mail, however it was not widely exploited.

After all that, the Lost Ark team has apologized to the playerbase, and will be issuing an apology gift--a real one this time--to its users.

Last night we sent out an in-game message to notify players of the upcoming critical adjustments to the Tripod system, which require Skill Tree Effects to be stored in the Skill Tree Inventory ahead of the November 16th update to avoid losing them. Unfortunately this message had an unintended 10 Pheons attached, which could be claimed on every character, and could subsequently be exploited by deleting and re-creating new characters. To remove the message and the potential economic exploit, an emergency downtime was induced.

We apologize for the downtime’s inconvenience and the confusion experienced by many Lost Ark players. We are currently evaluating options for a make-good gift, and will provide an update within 24hrs on the compensation all players will receive.

While we originally stated we planned to remove the Pheons from the accounts that received the mail, we understand that many players spent these in good faith. As we caught the exploit before it was widely used, we have decided not remove the Pheons. We hope to continue to provide valuable rewards throughout the rest of the month, and once again apologize to the players impacted by this.

Source

 

[lattechan]

Wow I was wondering why they went that far over 10 pheons, it's really not much. Then I read the end. If we choose to believe their reasoning, it makes sense. Perhaps they are saving face, though.

 

[SylverReZ]

Thought this was going to be a similar fate that happened with Overwatch 2.

 

[Deleted member 194275]

I just like MMOs when they mess up so bad that it becomes newsworthy.

 

[SS4]

Wonder what happened to those who used the exploit . . . did they get punished at all and did they keep their phat loot lol
Thir statement seems to suggest that the exploit was patched and thats the end of it . . .

 

[Shape]

Wonder what happened to those who used the exploit . . . did they get punished at all and did they keep their phat loot lol
Thir statement seems to suggest that the exploit was patched and thats the end of it . . .

Their statement says "Y'all pulled one over on us and got some PHAT loot. Respect." I think that's the end of it.

 

[Hells Malice]

When you're fucking up your entire game by letting walmart bargain bin quality bots run rampant...maybe don't do obvious things to further piss off your players.

 

[ZeroFX]

crappy game so yay.

 

[chrisrlink]

why immediatly revolk an "I'm sorry Gift" are they trying/planning to kill the game?

 

[x65943]

Pretty poorly implemented gift if you could use it to gain infinite currency - I wonder how many people had 9999999 pheons when they snooped

 

[lattechan]

Wonder what happened to those who used the exploit . . . did they get punished at all and did they keep their phat loot lol
Thir statement seems to suggest that the exploit was patched and thats the end of it . . .

It seems like not enough people figured out how to do it before they fixed it for them to care. I'd guess if someone did it like 10,000 times that would be egregiously obvious to them but who knows these days lol

 

[Taikutsumaranai]

Sh#t...My only regret is that I didn't claim it before they went ahead and deleted it.
But I wonder if it was a genuine mistake though or just a way to prevent exploiters...